![]() It’s Charlie himself who fills in the blanks about his deceased partner Alan, who, following his own mission abroad, had fallen for the slightly older college professor and abandoned the life and fiancée his parents had chosen for him, yet had never been able to rid himself of the ensuing guilt, guilt which eventually led him to quite literally starve himself to death. Obeying Charlie’s orders to read from a rather bad essay that seems somehow to calm Charlie down (an essay whose significance we will eventually discover), Elder Thomas is somewhat surprised-yet pleased and flattered-when Charlie agrees to let the young missionary come back and talk to him about his church.Įven more surprised (outraged would be the more appropriate term in her case) is Liz, who informs the Mormon lad that the his church has not only caused Charlie a lot of pain, “the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints killed his boyfriend.” Arriving to find Charlie wheezing and struggling for breath (a side effect of masturbating to Internet porn still on his laptop screen) is Elder Thomas (Wyatt Fenner), a nineteen-year-old Mormon on a mission. And they have to be really good.”Įllie is not the only unexpected visitor to pop into her father’s life this week. ![]() Charlie must rewrite the essays she needs to submit in order to be allowed to graduate and he must “write every other essay for the rest of the semester. Still, daughter does pay dad a visit, if only out of curiosity, and when he offers to pay for her companionship to the tune of a whopping $120,000, the small fortune his tutoring-and expense-free life-has allowed him to accumulate, Ellie agrees to take him up on his offer on one condition. Not surprisingly, reconciliation is the last thing his seventeen-year-old daughter has on her mind, not this rebellious monster of a teen whose “hate blog” is her very public way of telling mother and classmates to go fuck themselves. With no more than a week or so left to live given his current weight, blood pressure, and a case of congestive heart failure, Charlie decides that it’s now or never to reestablish a relationship with Ellie (Helen Sadler), the teenage daughter he has not seen in fifteen years, not since he left her mother for another man. ![]() Whatever Charlie’s life may have been like in the past, we soon realize that he’s down to only one friend, a nurse named Liz (Blake Lindsley) who alternately begs him to check himself into a hospital and brings by meatball subs and buckets of KFC. In conclusion, The Great Gatsby wasn’t so great, LOL.”) But I was bored by it because it was about people that I don’t care about and they do things I don’t understand. (“There were many aspects to the book The Great Gatsby. The Whale of Hunter’s tale (though this is but one of the play’s title’s several meanings) is Charlie (Matthew Arkin), a 40something divorced man whose weight (somewhere between 550 and 600 pounds) and blood pressure (238 over 134 at last check) keep him housebound, attached by gravity and inertia to the sofa from which he does online tutoring, correcting high school students’ godawful expository writing. If, however, you need more convincing, or simply can’t stand the suspense of knowing only the barest minimum, read on. You’ll thank me for not having given anything but this away. Simply reserve your seat at South Coast Repertory and let Hunter, director Martin Benson, and five phenomenal actors do the rest. Hunter’s The Whale going in, and if you wish to be as blown away by this absolutely brilliant, unexpectedly funny, devastatingly powerful new play as I was, ask no questions. A morbidly obese man attempts to reconcile with his angry teenage daughter.
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